Ed­u­ca­tion re­mains the key to free­dom from men­tal en­slave­ment says Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, Ca­roni Cen­tral MP and Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment. He was ad­dress­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions at the Three Roads Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Preysal, on Fri­day.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said while the Africans sought by their strug­gles to achieve phys­i­cal free­dom dur­ing the slav­ery era, the PP Gov­ern­ment seeks to eman­ci­pate all from men­tal slav­ery through ed­u­ca­tion, which he de­scribed as "the on­ly true and equal eman­ci­pa­tor." He said lead­ers such as Dr Er­ic Williams, T&T's first prime min­is­ter and Nel­son Man­dela, South Africa's first black pres­i­dent, had seen the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion in mov­ing a na­tion for­ward.

He re­called Williams' state­ment that the fu­ture of the na­tion lay in school­bags, while Man­dela de­scribed ed­u­ca­tion as "the most pow­er­ful weapon which you can use to change the world." Ra­mad­hars­ingh said, "So we must and will con­tin­ue to give the chil­dren of the na­tion the tools they need for suc­cess so that 50 years from this day they can say my fore­fa­thers did well."